37
CESifo Forum 4 / 2020 November Volume 21
REFORM MODEL
Progress toward gender equality has been constant and continuous over the past several decades. How-ever, the road to achieving equality between men and women, in particular with respect to economic oppor-tunities and political empowerment, is still long. There is a serious risk that this long road will get even longer and more difficult as a consequence of the current pandemic. The outbreak of Covid-19 exacerbates ex-isting gender differences in the labor market, at least in the short-term (Alon et al. 2020), because women are more vulnerable workers than men and because they have borne most of the burden of domestic tasks and childcare during the lockdown. In this context, it is crucial to understand which policies can be used to promote gender equality.
How to promote a more gender-equal context in which policies can be effective depends on several factors. The experience of Covid-19 suggests that the presence itself of a gender-balanced policy-making leadership can make a difference and help promote successful strategies (Profeta 2020b).
In the following section, I will briefly discuss which policies can promote female employment and how female leadership matters in public policy. This discussion is particularly meaningful with regard to the gender implications of the Covid-19 pandemic.
PUBLIC POLICY AND GENDER EQUALITY
Do Family Policies Promote Female Employment?
To provide an initial assessment of this relation-ship, I collected data from OECD statistics on family policies for 35 OECD countries spanning the period from 1970 to 2016. I concentrate on parental leaves and childcare. Table 1 shows the results of a regres-sion analysis which estimates the female employ-ment rate (aged 25-54) as a function of the length and generosity of parental leaves measured by the number of weeks and percentage paid (column 1) and as a function of the childcare expenditure (col-umn 2) separately. Col(col-umn 1 shows that the number of maximum weeks of job-protected leave shares a hump-shaped relationship with the female employ-ment rate: a greater period of leave is associated with higher female employment up to a certain level, af-ter which a further increase in the period of leave is related to lower female employment. Column 3 provides a joint estimate of the generosity of paren-tal leaves and childcare: the generosity of the pay-ment is negatively related to female employpay-ment,
whereas childcare is positive and highly significant. Column 4 confirms the strong role of childcare when the dependent variable is the employment gap as the difference between male and female employment rate. All regressions include country and year fixed effects.
Results in Table 1 are obviously simple correla-tions and do not have to be interpreted in a causal way. They suggest that family policies may help to promote female employment and that the specific design (for example, the length and generosity of the leave) matters and thus has to be carefully evaluated. They also suggest that childcare is a powerful pol-icy in reducing gender gaps. Several studies based on micro evidence confirm this relationship (see Profeta 2020a for a review).
Several countries have reacted to Covid-19 by introducing, among other measures, policies di-rected at families. These measures
are meant to support family needs and their work-life balance, such as additional time for parental leave or in-kind benefits (such as baby-sitter vouchers), which have been introduced in particu-lar during the lockdown and upon closure of schools. They are also meant to support working women.
Figure 1 shows for a large sam-ple of countries around the world
Paola Profeta
1Gender Equality and Public Policy
1 I thank Rosa Gobetti for her research assistance.
is Professor of Public Economics at Università Bocconi, Milano and Coordinator of the Dondena Gender Initiative.
Paola Profeta
Gender equality and public policy are strictly inter-related. On the one hand, public policies—which include childcare, maternity, paternity and parental leave—have a positive relationship with female employment rates and are thus advocated as a tool for accelerating progress toward gender equality. On the other hand, women as economic agents may themselves have an impact on policies: the changing role of women in families and societies and their greater representation in decision-making positions contribute to focusing and redirecting policy agenda toward items that ultimately reduce gender gaps. How to start this vital process is crucial yet difficult. It is particularly relevant at this time during the Covid-19 pandemic, owing to
the risk of possibly exacerbating gender differences and enlarging the existing gender gaps.
38 CESifo Forum 4 / 2020 November Volume 21
REFORM MODEL
which policies have been introduced: allowances and parental leaves represent the most common meas-ures. They include benefits to parents with small children and more time for caring the children. Al-though we understand the positive implications of these policies on families, we point out the lack of massive investment in childcare, which has been
shown to be the more effective policy against gen-der gaps.
Other measures also matter in terms of gender equality, some through a less direct relationship. One important, growing role is flexible work arrangements, which introduce a flexible place and time of work, and which have substantially increased during the
pan-Table 1
Family Policy and Female Employment
(1)
Fem. Empl. Rate Fem.Empl. Rate(2) Fem. Empl. Rate(3) Empl. Gap(4) Max. weeks job-protected leave 0.483***
(0.128) (0.109)0.265** – 0.254**(0.095) Max. weeks squared/100 – 0.212***
(0.072) – 0.094(0.060) (0.053)0.079 Percentage of the total paid leave – 0.028
(0.046) – 0.101**(0.041) (0.041)0.071* Average payment rate – 0.086
(0.065) – 0.083*(0.043) (0.035)0.057 Early childcare expenditures 16.29***
(3.464) 16.78***(3.342) – 17.59***(3.706) Constant 52.02*** (4.418) 58.15***(1.685) 53.06***(3.421) 37.95***(2.786) Country FE Y Y Y Y Year FE Y Y Y Y Observations 685 853 477 477 R2 0.490 0.330 0.560 0.585 Number of countries 22 34 19 19
Note: OLS estimations at the country level. OECD countries. All specifications include country and year dummies. Data refer to full-time employees and self-employed employees. Female employment rate: the employment/population ratio to men 25-54. Employment gap: the male-female difference in employment rates (%). Maximum
number of weeks of job-protected leave: maximum weeks of job-protected maternity, parental and home care leave available (and its squared version). Percentage of the
total paid leave: total weeks of paid maternity, parental and home care payments available to mother (%). Average payment rate: mother’s average payment rate.
Early childcare expenditure: public spending on early childhood education and care (% GDP). Sample period: 1970-2016 Robust standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.
Source: Elaboration on Profeta (2020a).
Family Policies Implemented as a Response to Covid-19 Pandemic
Source: Author's elaboration on data from OECD and European Systemic Risk Board. © ifo Institute Allowances
Allowances and Parental leaves
Allowances and Parental leaves and Research No
Other Parental leaves
Parental leaves and Social support Psychological assistance or other supports
Psychological assistance or other supports and Research Research
Social support Figure 1
39
CESifo Forum 4 / 2020 November Volume 21
REFORM MODEL
demic. Flexible work arrangements may have effects on the reduction of gender gaps in domestic activities (Angelici and Profeta 2020). By increasing the partic-ipation of men involved in housework and childcare, they have the potential of rebalancing the asymmetry in the allocation of chores within the family, which in turn may drive a reduction in gender differences in the labor market. To what extent this transmission channel is at work is still uncertain and will proba-bly only become visible over the long term. In fact, recent data shows that during the Covid-19 pandemic, despite the massive use of working from home and flexible working hours, women have had to bear most of the burden of domestic and childcare tasks (Del Boca et al. 2020).
WOMEN’S REPRESENTATION AND GENDER EQUALITY
Do Women Matter in Public Policy?
Women in decision-making positions may themselves have an impact on policies, as they contribute to fo-cusing and redirecting the policy agenda toward items which, in the end, reduce gender gaps. To provide an overview of this relationship, in parallel to what was stated in the previous section, I collected data on family expenditures and childcare expenditures (as % of GDP) in OECD countries and compare them with the share of seats held by women in national parliaments. Table 2 presents the result of OLS re-gressions at the country level, including a country and year dummy and a set of control variables (GDP per worker, female labor force participation, percentage of elderly over the age of 65): a greater presence of women holding positions in federal government is associated with higher family expenditures and higher childcare expenditures.
The simple correlations shown in Table 2 are sug-gestive and only partially informative, and obviously say nothing about causal relationships. It may be the case that in countries where family expenditures are higher, more women are elected to positions in fed-eral government because the high level of expendi-tures reduces gender gaps or because the country is characterized by a culture that is more open to gender balance in all dimensions. To solve this endogeneity problem, research has often used the introduction of gender quotas, which exogenously increase the share of women. Gender quotas have been largely studied both in the business and in the political dimension (Profeta 2020).
Another well-studied identification strategy ex-ploits the existence of close gender-mixed races. Using micro-level data, a recent paper on Bavaria in Ger-many has found evidence that local female politicians increase the availability of childcare (Baskaran and Hessami 2018). However, existing studies do not all draw the same conclusions, i.e., there is no consensus
in terms of the effect of gender of the politician on the policy implemented.
The relationship between female leadership and public policy has also attracted a great deal of attention in recent times during the Covid-19 pan-demic. Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, in an article published by Forbes, noticed that countries led by women are performing better in dealing with the Covid crisis: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Taiwan. Obviously, this simple correlation cannot have an a priori causal interpretation, yet it seems that the style of female leadership does matter in dealing successfully with crisis. This style includes telling the truth, the ability to be decisive, the use of advanced technology and innovative communi-cation. Several recent papers have tried to provide rigorous empirical support to this anecdotal evidence that countries led by female leaders have been per-forming better during the Covid-19 crisis (Coscieme et al. 2020; Garikipati and Kambhampati 2020; Ser-gent and Stajkovic 2020). They argue that the positive performance of female leadership could be the result of the style of policy response adopted by men and women: women have been more proactive and have coordinated with policy responses.
Does the evidence regarding female leadership during this Covid-19 crisis reflect the existence of a standard “female leadership style”?
Existing preliminary analysis suggests a positive answer. In the following section, I refer to the results in Profeta (2020a) on data from the Comparative Can-didate Survey dataset. This dataset collects answers to survey questions posed to a sample of male and female candidates running for national parliaments in different countries from 2005-2013 and 2013-2016. Compared to men, women are shown to be more in favor of women’s issues, for example, they are more sensitive to preferential treatment of women when applying for a job. They are more open to immigra-tion, less in favor of military intervention and more in favor of protecting the environment. Moreover, women
Table 2
Percentage of Women in Parliament Involved in Forming Public Policy (Family Expenditures, Childcare)
Public spending on families
(% of GDP) childhood education and care Public spending on early (% GDP)
Seats held by women in
national parliaments (% ) (0.00748)0.0144* (0.00317)0.00576* Constant 2.686* (1.332) – 1.308*(0.761) Country FE Y Y Year FE Y Y Observations 184 195 R2 0.035 0.129
Note: OLS estimations at the country level, OECD countries. All specifications include controls: GDP per worker, Female labor force (%), population aged 65+, country and year dummies. Sample period: 2005, 2007, 2009-2013. Robust standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.
40 CESifo Forum 4 / 2020 November Volume 21
REFORM MODEL
are more ready to sacrifice their own opinions when they differ from the preferences of voters of parties. Although these results should be considered prelim-inary, they open the way for a new argument in favor of gender equality: the style of leadership of female politicians may contribute to their performance, per-haps particularly in period of crisis.
CONCLUSION
To identify the relationship between gender equality and public policy is challenging. The relationship is also a dynamic one and evolves in concert with eco-nomic and social changes. Covid-19 is expected to have a crucial impact on both aspects of these rela-tionships and thus on ultimate gender gaps. Although I have provided some examples, further and more rigorous studies are needed to understand how public policies contribute to promoting gender equality, and how women in decision-making positions can make a difference during these current times of pandemic and, more generally, in future economies.
REFERENCES
Alon, T., M. Doepke, J. Olmstead-Rumsey and M. Tertilt (2020), “The Im-pact of COVID-19 on Gender Equality”, NBER Working Paper No. 26947. Angelici, M. and P. Profeta (2020), “Smart-working: Work Flexibility With-out Constraints”, Working Paper 137, Dondena Research Centre, Bocconi University.
Baskaran, T. and Z. Hessami (2019), “Competitively Elected Women as Policymakers”, CESifo Working Paper No. 8005.
Coscieme, L., L. Fioramonti, L. F. Mortensen, K. E. Pickett, I. Kubisze-wski, H. Lovins, J. McGlade, K. V. Ragnarsdottir, D. Roberts, R. Costanza, R. De Vogli and R. Wilkinson “Women in Power: Female Leadership and Public Health Outcomes During the COVID-19 Pandemic”, MedRxiv 2020.07.13.20152397; doi:https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.13.20152397. Del Boca, D., N. Oggero, P. Profeta and M.C. Rossi (2020), “Women’s Work, Housework and Childcare, Before and During COVID-19”, Review of
Economics of the Household, in press.
Garikipati, S. and U. Kambhampati, (June 2020), “Leading the Fight Against the Pandemic: Does Gender ‘Really’ Matter?”, available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3617953 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ ssrn.3617953.
OECD (2020), “Women at the Core of the Fight Against COVID-19 Crisis”. Profeta, P. (2020a), “Gender Equality and Public Policy. Measuring Pro-gress in Europe”, Cambridge University Press.
Profeta, P. (2020b), "Gender Equality andPublic Policy During Covid-19", CESifo Economic Studies, in press.
Sergent, K. and A. D. Stajkovic (2020), “Women’s Leadership is Associ-ated with Fewer Deaths During the COVID-19 Crisis: Quantitative and Qualitative Analyses of United States Governors”, Journal of Applied
